


Stuck in Aronya

by CIChantea



Category: Mystical Warriors
Genre: Gen, I'm writing Mystical Warriors, Inspired by Novel, Mystical Warriors isn't actually done yet, Published for my friend with permission, Side Story, Sparrow Aldrickson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 22:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8866462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CIChantea/pseuds/CIChantea
Summary: Joy Watson is beta-testing Mystical Warriors when she unexpectedly enters the video game.





	

**Author's Note:**

> All credit for this wonderful fanfic belong to my writing friend Sparrow Aldrickson, who wrote this! She also created Joy/Valkyrie, Avery/Scarab, and Carter/Typhoon. Only Sigi and the world belong to me.  
> Also, for those who don't know, GUI stands for Graphical User Interface and is pronounced "gooey."

If there was a world outside of the Watson family living room, Joy wasn’t aware of it. Her eyes were glued to her television screen, her fingers moving rapidly on the controller almost with a will of their own.   
Joy was playing Mystical Warriors, a brand-new video game, which she was a beta tester for. And, as far as she knew, she was one of only 3 people in all of England who were beta testing. She had been so excited that she had been playing the game for 5 hours straight; almost since she had gotten it...5.3 hours ago? She shook her head. There was no time for math--there was just her and her video game.  
She had to pause in the middle of a fighting sequence--the graphics of which she enjoyed immensely--to push her too-long auburn bangs out of her eyes and to adjust her glasses on the bridge of her nose. She uncrossed her legs, shifting the way she was sitting on the coffee table.  
She tried pressing play, but the game seemed to have frozen. She sighed in frustration. The one downside to beta testing was the glitches, which she assumed she had just encountered.   
And then, the funniest thing happened. She suddenly felt like she was fading. The living room got fuzzy. And then she heard a voice say, “Here’s another one.”

* * *

“Oh--” said a red-haired girl, who seemed to be the one who had just talked, “--she’s just a kid!”  
“I’m 15,” Joy contested hotly. “I’m just...slightly vertically challenged.” The other girl was only about 18, anyway. “And where--what--is this--am I--”  
The other girl huffed. “Like I said, a kid,” she muttered before continuing: “I’m Sigi. This is Aronya, and I get to show you around.” She made it sound like this thing that she “got” to do was about as fun for her as getting a root canal.   
“Aronya--but that’s--no!” Joy said.   
“Yeah, it’s actually true. You’re inside Mystical Warriors, kid.”  
“But…” Joy couldn’t quite process being inside a video game. Sure, she’d always wished she would, but for it to actually happen? That seemed like a huge stretch.   
“Well, do you want me to show you around or not?”  
“No! I want you to get me out,” Joy said.  
“The only way to get out is to beat the game.”  
“Then tell me how to do that.”  
“You can’t yet. We have to max out on players Inside before we can actually play.”  
“How many are there now? And how many do we need?”  
“Right now there are 9, counting you. We need 500.”   
“500?”  
“Do you want to see around Aronya or not?”  
Joy sighed. “I suppose.”  
“Follow me. We need to make you into a character first.”  
“Character? As in, I’ll be a character in Mystical Warriors?”  
Sigi sighed. “Yes. Now come on.”  
Sigi led Joy through the countryside, past the spawn point, and to the Central Palace. Joy wasn’t paying much attention; she was still unable to process the fact that she was inside a video game. She figured she could explore later and figure everything out for herself.   
But the moment Joy walked into the Central Palace, she noticed every detail of the magnificent building. It was huge and beautiful, white and marble-columned. She stared, open-mouthed, at the splendid palace, trying to take it all in. Earth to Joy, she chided herself. She couldn’t afford to miss anything Sigi was about to say; she thought it must be important.  
“Sign-in is this way. You remember your avatar name?” Sigi continued walking at a brisk pace through several hallways as she asked Joy the question.  
Joy rolled her eyes. “No, of course not,” she sarcastically answered. “You really can’t expect me to remember something so trite.” Seeing a slightly annoyed expression on Sigi’s face, Joy added, rolling her eyes, “I’m joking. I remember it.”  
“We’re here,” Sigi said, stopping in a room, with the biggest computer Joy had ever seen contained inside. “Enter your avatar name into the computer, then choose your armor and weapon. You can pick the colors of both.”  
Joy walked up to the computer and typed “Valkyrie,” then chose silver armor with green accents. She considered for a moment before picking out a cutlass. “Now what?”  
“I show you the GUI while you get used to your new name, Valkyrie.”  
“You show me what?” She was interrupted by Sigi creating a computer screen out of thin air--or so it seemed.   
“Your GUI--Graphical User Interface. It contains your map, your addresses, your phone number, your list of friends, your inventory, and the names of any Companies you’ve joined.”  
“Adress? Phone number? Companies?”  
Sigi sighed impatiently. “I already told you on the walk here. You’ll live in the city at least until after you defeat Level 1--longer if you want to. You get a phone number to use in-game only. And you can start a business. Any more questions?”  
“Only two--how do I open my GUI? And is Sigi your avatar name, or your Outside name?”  
“You drag your hands through the air like this.”   
Valkyrie tried and opened an interface. “Neat,” she said. She had a sudden thought. “Will it track my skill progress?”  
“It will. And, speaking of skills, if you die in-game, all your combat skills will reset, but your domestic skills will stay at their previous level.”  
“Domestic? As in, sewing and cooking and cleaning and ironing pinafores?”  
Sigi sighed. “Just cooking and sewing. Let’s go.”  
“You didn’t answer my question.”  
Sigi looked about 2.7 steps away from tearing a pillar off of its base and hitting Valkyrie upside the head with it. “What question?”  
“Is Sigi your Inside or Outside name?” She hoped she was using the terms correctly, but she’d assumed Inside meant inside Mystical Warriors and Outside meant the “real” world.  
“Sigi is my Inside name.”  
“Then what’s your Outside name?”  
“I’m not telling you.”  
“Fine.”  
Sigi huffed slightly. “Come on, I’ll show you your house.”  
They left the Central Palace, walking past a couple of buildings until they reached one with a number 9 in front.  
“You’ll live here at least until you beat level 1. Longer if you want to. You should be able to find your own way around,” Sigi said, sounding like she wanted to leave. “But, just so you know,” she added, “the first floor will be your business. You can sell whatever you want, or join another Company if you want to.”  
“Cool!”  
“Do you need anything else?”  
She tilted her head. “Eyeglass cleaner, maybe? I can’t really see.”  
Sigi sighed. “Can’t help you with that.”  
“Goodbye, then.”  
“See you,” Sigi said, sounding rather relieved.   
Valkyrie huffed quietly and went inside. The whole first floor was empty, which she found rather odd, but she shrugged and went up the stairs to see what wonders awaited her there.  
She wouldn’t necessarily describe the living level as “wondrous.” It was simply furnished, with 5 rooms and fewer windows than she would have liked. She sat up on the kitchen table to try to sort everything out.  
I’m really in Mystical Warriors! was her first thought, followed by Only 8 other people are. What’re they like? She silently wished that they were nothing like Sigi.   
The blurriness of her glasses as she stared at the kitchen wall reminded her of her earlier request of Sigi. She figured that if there was no lense cleaner, she could at least use a bathroom towel to wipe them off.  
She went into the bathroom and took off her glasses, blinking her light green eyes hazily. She picked up a towel--of course it had to be orange--and wiped off the lenses the best she could. She put them back on. It wasn’t much of an improvement, but it was something.   
She started turning, but stopped to study her reflection, which she usually didn’t do. Joy Watson--Valkyrie, she corrected herself--didn’t care about her appearance as much as other girls her age did, but she couldn’t help wondering what all these new people would think of her. She tilted her head slightly and smiled with one side of her mouth, dimpling deeply. She wrinkled her nose slightly. Her mom always told her she was “cute,” but Joy didn’t see it in that moment. Her face was too round, her hair was too straight, and she was way too short. She shook her head. No time to worry. She grinned at her reflection, trying to tell herself how pretty she was and how cute her dimples were and, man, that was her favorite outfit she was wearing.  
At least the last one was true. She was wearing grey jeans, an unbuttoned flannel shirt, and her favorite t-shirt: it was white with a picture of an Xbox controller and the word “noobs” in black.  
She straightened her shoulders, smiled one last time at her reflection, and turned around and walked out. 

* * *

A week later found Valkyrie fairly well adjusted to life inside the game. She’d made a few friends and a couple more beta testers had entered the game. One of them was a girl from Liverpool whose username was Scarab. Needless to say, the girls’ shared interest in slightly obscure mythology made them like each other instantly.   
One morning about a week after joining, Valkyrie was woken by a phone call. She groaned and rolled over, feeling around on her bedside table for her glasses. She shoved them on and quickly answered the call from Scarab.  
“Hello?” she asked drowsily.  
“Hey, Val. How are you?”  
“Other than just having been given a literal wake up call, I’m doing peachy,” she answered dryly. “Yourself?”  
“I’m good, I’m good,” Scarab answered with a warm smile. “I made breakfast--because I know you can’t cook for yourself,” she said teasingly.  
“You’re a saint, Scarab. I’ll be right over.” Valkyrie opened her inventory and picked out the outfit she had arrived in, minus the flannel shirt and plus a black hoodie. She brushed her teeth and hair quickly and walked down to the house marked 14.   
When she knocked on the door, a tall girl with white-blonde hair and icy blue eyes opened it.  
“Hi, Val! Come in!” Scarab said with a smile, holding the door open for Valkyrie.  
“Thanks so much for cooking for me, Scarab. I feel like I haven’t eaten a good meal since I’ve gotten here unless it was one of yours. I’m perfectly useless in the kitchen,” she laughed. She still hardly had any Cooking Skills.  
Scarab smiled broadly. “I only got in the game two days ago, Val.”  
“I know,” she grinned. “And the dinner you made me last night was the first real meal I’ve had since I moved here.” Both girls laughed. Even though they had only known each other for a few days, they’d hit it off instantly and felt like they’d been friends forever.   
They both tramped up the stairs and went to Scarab’s kitchen.  
There were pancakes and bacon and eggs, and Valkyrie promptly sat down on the kitchen table and started eating.  
Scarab laughed at her. “Why don’t you sit on a chair?”  
“Because normal people sit on chairs. Do I look like a normal person to you, Scarab?”  
“You look like a short person,” she chuckled.  
Valkyrie pouted. “I’m 5 feet 2 inches. That’s not that short.”  
“Of course not,” Scarab smiled.  
“So,” Valkyrie said, changing the subject, “how are you adjusting to Aronya?”  
“It’s...interesting. At least I already know what my business is going to be,” she said, nodding at the food on the table.  
“Then you’re already farther along than I am. Although I have a little idea--I’m not sure if it would work, though.”  
“What is it?”  
“Well, I think I’ll be able to get into the code on my GUI. If I can do that, the there’s no end to what I can change on it. And I thought that other people might want me to hack their GUIs and do...well, whatever cool stuff I can figure out to do on it.”  
Scarab blinked, seeming overwhelmed by Valkyrie’s abnormally fast speaking pace. “That’s...great, I think.”  
“It is. The only problem: I don’t yet know how to hack it. I don’t think it’ll be too hard, though. The technology seems really similar to--”  
“I’m going to stop you right there,” Scarab said with a smile. “I’m a waste to tell it to--I’m not a genius computer programmer like you. Tell someone who knows what you’re talking about.”  
“Oh, sorry,” Valkyrie said, grinning.  
“I think there’ll be plenty of people like that, though--I mean, most people who are getting the game this early are bound to be as smart as you--”  
She was interrupted by the ringing of Valkyrie’s GUI. Valkyrie answered the call from--Sigi?  
“Hello?” Valkyrie asked, surprised. It wasn’t that she and Sigi disliked each other--they just had their differences and elected to spend most time away from each other.  
“I heard there’s a new player at the spawn point,” Sigi said, wasting no time. “I’m a little tied up. Go talk to them, would you?”  
“Uh, sure,” Valkyrie said, puzzled that Sigi would ask her out of all people. “But--”  
“You’d better get down there before the player gets lost,” Sigi said impatiently.  
“Right. But--”  
“Why aren’t you leaving? I told you you need to leave.”  
Valkyrie bit back something sarcastic. “Alright, I’m leaving, I’m leaving.”   
Sigi hung up before Valkyrie had time to say anything else.  
“Sorry to abandon you, Scarab.”  
“No trouble,” her friend said with a gracious smile. “Now scoot before Sigi finds you and bludgeons you with your own glasses.”  
“Oh, that sounds terrifying,” Valkyrie said with a roll of her eyes. “But I’m going. Bye.”  
“See you!”  
Valkyrie walked down the stairs and outside, making her way to the spawn point as quickly as she could.   
When she got there, she saw that the new player was a boy, tall and thin with brown hair. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, pacing and looking around anxiously. When he caught sight of Valkyrie, she could see him give a sigh of relief, while she immediately became painfully self-aware about just about everything.  
She wouldn’t say that she was scared around boys, necessarily. She was just never quite sure what to do with herself, or what to say. And when she got nervous, her sarcasm was more biting than usual.  
“Hello!” she called when she was close enough.  
“Hi!” he called back nervously.  
She got to him and stuck out her hand. “Welcome to Mystical Warriors. My name’s Valkyrie.”  
“M--mystical Warriors? But--”  
“You’re inside the video game,” she said. Joy Watson didn’t believe in extenuating anything.   
“I am?”  
“Yeah.”  
“No way.”  
“Yes way.”  
“That’s not possible, though--is it?”  
“I already told you, it is.”  
He shook his head. “That’s crazy.”  
She nodded. “Yeah, it really is.”  
“So, like, are you a character from the game, or another person trapped inside?”  
“I’m trapped inside, too. There were no original characters,” she explained.  
“Is there anyone else?”  
“17 others, counting me.”  
“Cool!”  
“Uh...I wouldn’t exactly call being trapped inside a video game ‘cool’…” she said.  
“Are you kidding? This is awesome!”  
“Okay,” she admitted, warming slightly. “It is pretty cool.”  
“So where are we?”   
“We’re at the spawn point right now. The city is that way,” she said, pointing back the way she came.  
“Can I go see it?” He looked like he might explode if they didn’t.  
“Yeah. That’s where you’ll live until you beat Level 1. You can also live there afterwards, if you want to.”  
“Cool!”  
“It’s a really neat place,” she agreed, internally cringing. Why did she have to use the word “neat?”  
“Show me!”  
She laughed. “I am. Come on.”  
She walked ahead the whole time, answering questions like “Is your name actually Valkyrie?” and “Are the others nice?” When they approached the city, she was asked even more: “Wow, I get to live here?” “All of these houses are going to be filled up? That’s a lot of people!” “What’s that big castle in the middle of the city?”  
The last one she answered wearily. “That’s where we’re going.”  
“Really? Cool!”  
As they neared the Central Palace, she stopped having to answer questions and instead nodded agreement to his too-many-to-count cool’s and wow’s and that is so awesome’s.   
When they got inside, she told him to input his username, to which he responded by triumphantly typing “Typhoon.” She thought privately that the name suited his personality excellently.  
When she explained the GUI, Typhoon looked like his head might pop off. “That is the coolest thing I have ever seen.”  
“You said that about the city. And the palace. And my accent.”  
“Well, this is even cooler than all of those!”  
She sighed, but couldn’t really say anything deprecating about his enthusiasm; she had her moments of overwhelming excitement. It just usually didn’t have anything to do with buildings or accents.  
She took him to the house marked 18. She explained as succinctly as she could about the business he could open and answered the rest of his questions. She then waved goodbye and made her way towards Scarab’s house. She knocked on the door and was relieved when it was opened.   
“Val, there you are! I was beginning to think you had forgotten where Aronya was!”  
“Are you kidding?” she asked as Scarab led her upstairs. “With all the questions Typhoon asked and I answered, I think I must know everything there is to know about Aronya.”  
“Typhoon?”  
“The new player. And believe me, the name suits him,” she said, crashing on Scarab’s couch and curling up with exhaustion.  
“Poor dear! Are you hungry?”  
“Always,” Valkyrie answered, her voice muffled from her face being buried in a pillow.   
“I’ll make some popcorn, then.”  
“Have I ever told you how much I love you, Scarab?”  
Her friend laughed. “I think you just did.”   
Valkyrie dozed while Scarab made the food. When Scarab walked in, she had to push Valkyrie off of the couch to wake her.  
Valkyrie groaned in protest. “Ow! Be careful!”  
“Do you want food or not?”  
“Yeah, yeah.”  
Valkyrie ate the whole bowl of popcorn and then said yes when Scarab offered to make another bowl.  
While Scarab was in the kitchen, Valkyrie’s GUI started ringing. She was actually relieved when it was Sigi and not Typhoon.  
“What’s up?” Valkyrie asked when she answered.  
“How’d talking to the new player go?”  
“I would rather get a spinal tap then have to show him around again.”  
Sigi almost laughed. “Yeah, I met him. Glad you got that job and not me.”  
“Well, that’s nice of you. Do you need anything else?”  
“No, I was just checking in. He came wandering around and asking so many questions that I was afraid that you hadn’t done your job.”  
“He had more questions? I figured he’d asked everything that it was possible to ask.”  
“Really? He must have a lot to say,” she muttered.  
“You’re telling me.”  
“Well, see you.”  
“Bye.”  
Scarab came in right then. “Val,” she asked with a lift of her eyebrow, “did I just hear you have a civil conversation with Sigi?”  
“Don’t expect it to happen again,” Valkyrie answered, half-serious.  
“Alright, I won’t,” Scarab laughed.

* * *

“I did it! I did it!”  
A familiar Southern British accent sounded outside of Scarab’s door a few days after Typhoon entered the game.  
Scarab got up from her couch, but, before she could take more than a few steps, the door burst open and Valkyrie burst in, still wearing her pajamas and glasses askew.  
“Valkyrie? What are you doing up?” she asked after glancing at the clock, which read as 6 o’clock in the morning. “I thought you ‘never got up before 10 unless it involved food.’”  
“I’m not up early,” her friend explained, looking just a little crazed. “I’m up really, really late.”  
“What?”  
“I didn’t exactly go to sleep last night.”  
“What? Why not?”  
“Because,” Valkyrie explained impatiently, “I hacked my GUI!”  
“Oh, that’s great! What did you do?”  
“Well, it was really similar to the setup of a--”  
“Sorry, I meant, ‘what did you change on the GUI so far?’’’  
“Oh,” Valkyrie said, looking a tad disappointed. She brightened back up quite quickly though. “The first thing I did was change the opening process of my GUI. In addition to dragging out the screen, it now responds to a verbal command!” She demonstrated, saying “activate GUI.” The interface opened.  
“That’s great! Really useful, I would think.”  
“Yeah, for sure,” Valkyrie agreed enthusiastically. “Anyway, the next thing I did was combine the map and friends list so that I can see where my friends are.”  
“You stalker, you.”  
Valkyrie cackled, covering her face with her hands as she laughed.  
“You are tired, aren’t you?” Scarab asked with a chuckle.  
“Extremely.”  
“Did you add anything else?”  
“Yeah. It’ll tell me if my food inventory gets down to 3 items or less, and I can also do verbal searches instead of typing.”  
“So you’re turning your GUI into Siri?”  
“A little,” she laughed.  
“You know who you should show?” Scarab asked with a sly smile. “Typhoon.”  
“Oh, please no. He would never stop raving about it. Ever.”  
“At least you’d get your first business out of it. Are you going to turn it into a business?”  
“You really think people would be interested?”  
“I’m already itching to see how many mystics I have so I can pay you!”  
“Alright, I’ll go set up shop.”

* * *

Typhoon pushed open the door to Valkyrie’s shop, where a brand-new “Open” sign was hanging in the window.   
The shop had a simple setup--it really only looked like a living room, except with a big counter stretching across one wall. Valkyrie was sitting in a swivel chair behind the counter, tapping furiously on her GUI whilst simultaneously trying to blow her bangs out of her eyes.  
“Hi, Valkyrie! Your shop is so cool!” he said enthusiastically after a second of admiring the place.  
She looked up. “Thanks. I’m pretty proud of it.”  
“So, like, what do you do in here?”  
“I make improvements to GUIs. Modifications, I guess.”  
“Cool! Like what?”  
Valkyrie gave her list of current modifications, which included the ones she’d come up with earlier that day, plus two others she’d figured out since then: the addition of a calendar and a clock. Typhoon, of course, wanted them all.  
It took her over an hour to manipulate all the code, during which he went exploring around Aronya.  
He ran into Sigi, who seemed more annoyed with him than ever. Not that he minded. He talked to her anyway. That girl was gorgeous and tough. He thought she was the coolest thing since the Central Palace.  
But she eventually got away from him, and he spent the rest of the time walking cheerfully around, making small talk with various other betas he ran into.  
When he got back, Valkyrie was still working.  
“Valkyrie?” he asked after standing in the doorway for a while and getting no recognition.  
She almost fell down. “Oh, gosh, I didn’t see you there. I’m almost done. Give me 5 minutes.”  
6 minutes later, she was done. She showed him all the features she’d added and how to use them.   
“This is so cool! How much?”  
“I don’t know. How much do you think it’s worth?”  
“It’s amazing! And you worked so hard! I’ll give you 80 mystics!”  
She whistled, “You’re sure?”  
“Totally!”  
“Alright,” she said as he handed her the money. She put it in her inventory.   
“See you later, Typhoon,” she said, still looking at her GUI and starting to work on it again.  
“Bye! Thanks again!”  
“Yep,” she murmured as he closed the door.

* * *

Valkyrie thought that swivel chairs were the best thing ever invented. She had no practical reason to put that long counter and swivel chair in her shop, but she did it anyway, because swivel chairs were freaking fun.  
She was rolling up and down the length of the counter when the door to her shop opened and Sigi came in.  
Sigi gave her a disapproving look when she noticed what Valkyrie had been doing, but seemed to forget her distaste in a second.  
“It happened,” she said tersely.  
“What happened?” Valkyrie asked, confused.  
“The first non-betas just entered the game.”  
“What? But we’ve only been in the game for--what, two months? All the betas are already in the game?”  
“All of them,” Sigi confirmed.  
“That’s crazy. So...not that much longer until the game becomes fully active then?”  
“No, not at all.”  
“Wow.”  
“Yeah.”  
“So why’d you come to tell me?”  
“I was right by your house. I’m telling everyone, though,” she answered shortly.  
“Uh-huh.”  
“Why are you looking at me like that?”  
“Why is it so hard for you to admit that you’re friends with me, Sigi?”  
“What are you talking about?”  
“Never mind,” she muttered. “Need anything? An update to your GUI, maybe? I know you’d just love to pay me for something.”  
“Sure I would,” Sigi said sarcastically, with an impatient roll of her eyes. “No, I don’t need anything else. Bye.”  
She walked out, and Valkyrie went back to rolling around on her swivel chair.

**Author's Note:**

> The number of houses, the color of the towels, the location of the Spawn point, and some of the GUI-editing are either in flux at the moment or are not accurate to canon, but not on purpose.


End file.
